Examining ships that have made an impact on Naval Warfare and Naval History.

Welcome Aboard!

Hello out there! The purpose of this blog is to spread the word that Naval History is interesting and worth knowing. After searching the net, I couldn't find a single place that dealt solely with the subject of Naval Warfare, so I decided to create one. I will be posting pictures and text of various ships and will then describe what part those ships played in Naval Warfare and Naval History. For anyone interested in these subjects, I hope this will be your new home. Every Tuesday a new ship will be posted and each month I'll have a "Ship of the Month" displayed at the bottom of the blog. Both famous and not-so-famous ships will be highlighted. But what they all have in common is that, in some small way, they made an impact on Naval Warfare and Naval History. I think it's a historical lesson worth reading. I also hope you like what you see and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for dropping by.

Contact

This blog was created by Remo. I have been forced to close my "Comments" section due to the enormous amount of spam that is being sent to it. I just can't keep up with it anymore, so I decided to end the comments. People who flood blogs with spam are jerks and should be ashamed of themselves. Anyway, if you want to contact me, e-mail me at Libertyship46@aol.com. On balance, I get less spam via my e-mail account than in the "Comments" section of the blog. So if you want to make a comment, send me an e-mail. Other readers on the blog will not be able to see it, but at least I'll have some contact with the outside world! Thank you.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The US Revenue Cutter McCulloch was built by William Cramp & Sons in Philadelphia and was commissioned into the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the US Coast Guard) on December 12, 1897. The ship had a barquentine rig and a triple expansion steam engine. Armed with four 3-inch guns and with a crew of 130 men, the McCulloch was the largest Revenue Cutter built to date.

The McCulloch was on a shakedown cruise in the Far East when, on April 5, 1898, her Commanding Officer, Captain D.B. Hogsdon, received word in Singapore that he was to join Commodore George Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron in Hong Kong. The McCulloch quickly set sail for Hong Kong and arrived there on April 17. On April 27, the entire Squadron left Hong Kong and on April 30 they entered Manila Bay. The first major naval battle of the Spanish-American War was about to begin. McCulloch’s primary duty during the attack was to guard the two supply ships that were sailing with Dewey’s task force and to tow any crippled American warships to safety. The attack was a complete success and none of the American ships sustained any major damage. After the Spanish fleet was destroyed, the McCulloch was sent to Hong Kong to cable the first dispatches of the great victory at Manila Bay to Washington. In the weeks following the historic battle, the McCulloch served as a dispatch vessel and was also used to patrol Manila Bay. Although small and lightly armored, the McCulloch won much praise from Commodore Dewey for her performance in both the Battle of Manila Bay and the subsequent blockade of Manila itself. This small ship, which wasn’t even built for the US Navy, clearly made a good impression on the demanding Commodore.

The McCulloch returned to the United States and arrived at her new home port of San Francisco on January 10, 1899. In 1906 she was sent to Alaska to enforce fur seal regulations and to take part in the Bering Sea patrol. The McCulloch returned to San Francisco in 1912 and patrolled the California coastline until June 13, 1917, when she was rammed and sunk three miles northwest of Point Conception, California, by the Pacific Steamship Company’s SS Governor. This was a sad end to a historic little ship.

Friday, April 20, 2007

This is our first ship. It is the HMCS Summerside and she was a Flower Class Corvette with the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. They were amazing warships and they made an enormous contribution fighting German U-Boats in the Battle of the Atlantic. These ships were also made famous in Nicholas Monsarrat's book, The Cruel Sea. Currently, the HMCS Sackville is the only ship left in this class and it's moored in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a museum ship. Unfortunately, the Sackville is in danger of being scrapped, primarily due to lack of interest in preserving her as a museum ship. You can read more about this sad state of affairs here: http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2007/03/save-sackville.html

Ship of the Month: USS Wandank

The 795-ton USS Wandank (AT-26) was an Algorma class fleet tug that was built by the Ferguson Steel and Iron Company at Buffalo, New York, and was commissioned on 23 March 1920. The ship was approximately 156 feet long and 30 feet wide, had a top speed of 13 knots, and had a crew of 25 officers and men. For roughly 20 years after being commissioned, Wandank worked along America’s east coast, primarily near her base at Norfolk, Virginia. In 1939, she assisted with the rescue and salvage efforts for the submarine USS Squalus (SS-192), which had accidently sunk off Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Wandank then was based at Boston, Massachusetts, in October 1940 and remained there throughout World War II. Her designation was changed to ATO-26 in May of 1944. Wandank was decommissioned in September 1946 and in July 1947 was sold to a commercial firm in New Orleans, Louisiana, which operated her under the name of W.A. Bisso. The tug was scrapped in 1971 after being in service for 51 years. The photograph shows USS Wandank at Boston circa the later 1920s or early 1930s. USS Constitution is on the opposite side of the pier. US Naval Historical Center Photograph.